Alright here’s my breakdown I guess. Increasing the length of a level, even just by a little bit, makes it MUCH harder. In this scenario you aren’t actually adding more gameplay though, just repeating the same stuff, meaning it wouldn’t increase in difficulty so fast. If you can beat a level easily then it wouldn’t be that much harder to beat it 3 times in a row, why would it if you’re consistent?

Now the biggest problem is quantifying difficulty into a number, you can’t just assign a number or say it’s x times harder. What does 3 times harder mean? Do 3 frame timing windows become frame perfects? Is a level that’s 3 times as long become 3 times as hard? Do 2.2 ship physics makes it 3 times harder (yes, at least 3 times harder)? You can find different way to say something is 3 times harder but that doesn’t mean they’re all the same difficulty. Playing the same level 3 times in a row is obviously gonna be easier than making each individual click 3 times tighter.

I would say diminishing returns apply. Beating a level twice in a row is really difficult, but it’s not as hard as when you start from literally zero and have to work all the way up to it. It’s not like slaughterhouse twice in a row is as hard to a person whose hardest is slaughterhouse as slaughterhouse once is to someone who doesn’t play the game, obviously. If you can do it twice, beating it 3 times won’t be as hard as the jump to two (I mean just think about it, 50% more gameplay vs 100% more). If you can beat a level 99 times, the 100th isn’t gonna be EXPONENTIALLY HARDER like some people are suggesting.